Watt didn’t need Nadia to tell him he’d better not respond to that. Anything he said would only dig him in deeper. He just nodded once, jerkily, hating her.
“You see, Rylin started at my school today,” Leda mused aloud. She’d started circling through his room like a predator, opening various drawers and glancing at the contents, then shutting them again. “It really caught me off guard. I hate that feeling. The whole reason I pay you is to never feel that way, ever again.”
“I believe we just established that you don’t pay me,” he replied evenly.
Leda slammed another drawer shut and lifted her eyes to look directly at Watt. “Where is it?” she demanded. “Your computer.”
Nadia. Can you pretend to be an external? he thought, and made a show of pushing a useless button on his monitor. “Right here. Look, I’m turning it on,” he said. “And now it’s starting up.”
“I don’t need a running commentary.” Leda took a seat on Watt’s bed without being invited. Some strange part of Watt realized that was the first time a girl had ever been on his bed. He’d hooked up with plenty of girls before, of course, but he always went back to their places. He shook his head, a little irritated; why was he thinking about sex right now?
“Let’s start with Avery,” Leda began.
“What? Right now?”
“No time like the present,” she said with false cheerfulness. “Come on, pull up her room comp.”
“No,” Watt said automatically.
“Too painful a memory?” Leda laughed, but it rang hollow to Watt’s ears. He wondered what had happened tonight, to send her down here. “Fine, then. Her flickers.”
“Still no.”
“Oh my god, move over,” she snapped, pushing him impatiently from his chair. Their legs brushed, sending a strange row of sparks up Watt’s body. He quickly edged away from her.
“How do you input commands?” She leaned forward and gazed expectantly at the monitor.
“Nadia, say hello to Leda,” Watt instructed, very loudly and slowly. Use the speakers, Watt thought, but Nadia was already doing so—using every speaker in the room, including the ones on his old VR gear.
“Hello to Leda,” Nadia boomed. Watt barely choked back a laugh. She was using a robotic, monotonous voice, like in old science fiction movies.
Leda practically jumped. “Nice to meet you,” she said cautiously.
“Wish I could say the same,” Nadia replied.
“What is that supposed to mean?” Leda smiled.
Great, go ahead and antagonize her, Watt thought, rolling his eyes.
I’m just following your lead. “You think you can blackmail Watt because you’ve got something on him? Do you even know what I have on you? I see everything you do,” Nadia warned, as ominously as she could.
Leda shoved back the chair in a show of anger, but Watt could tell Nadia’s proclamation had shaken her.
“You watch it. Both of you.” Leda pulled her bag onto one shoulder and stormed out without another word.
Watt waited until he heard the front door close behind her before collapsing backward onto his bed, rubbing his hands over his temples. His bedcovers still smelled like Leda’s rose perfume, which pissed him off to no end. “Nadia, we’re screwed,” he said aloud. “Is she going to keep blackmailing us for all eternity?”
“You won’t be safe unless she’s in jail,” Nadia told him, which he already knew.
“I agree. But we’ve been through this already. How could I send her there?”
He and Nadia had tried everything they could think of. There was no video of Leda pushing Eris: there weren’t any cameras on the roof, and no one had been recording on their contacts when it happened, not even Leda, not even Nadia—who deeply regretted it, but then, no way could she have predicted that outcome. Hell, Nadia had even hacked all the satellite cams within a thousand-kilometer vicinity, but none of them had picked up anything in the darkness.
There was, unfortunately, no way to prove what had happened on the roof. It was Watt’s word against Leda’s. And the moment he said anything, he and Nadia were toast.
Nadia was quiet for a moment. “What if you recorded her confessing to her actions?”
“Can we deal in reality and not hypotheticals? Even if she did say the truth aloud, no way would she say it to me.”
“I disagree,” Nadia said levelly. “She would say it if she trusted you.”
For a moment Watt didn’t understand what Nadia was implying. When he did, he laughed aloud. “Do I need to reprogram your logic functions? Why would Leda Cole trust me, when she so clearly hates me?”
“I’m just trying to explore all possible options. Remember, you programmed me to protect you above everything else. And statistics would suggest that the more time you spend with Leda, the greater your chances of winning her trust,” Nadia replied.
“Statistics are useless when your chances of success increase from one-billionth of a percent to one-millionth.” Watt pulled up the covers, closing his eyes. “Did you know about Rylin going to school with them?” he asked, changing the subject.
“I did. You never asked me about her, though.”
“Have you hacked their school?” An idea was forming in his mind. “What if we messed with Leda a little—put Rylin in all her classes, so Leda can never escape her?”
“Like I haven’t already done that. You underestimate me,” Nadia said, sounding self-satisfied.
Watt couldn’t help smiling into the darkness. “I think the more time you spend in my brain, the more my personality has grafted itself onto you,” he mused aloud.
“Yes. I’d venture to say I know you better than you know yourself.”
Now there was a terrifying notion, Watt thought in amusement.
“Nadia?” he added as he started to drift off. “Please don’t ever turn off around Leda again, no matter what commands I’ve given in the past. I need you, around her.”
“That you do,” Nadia agreed.
RYLIN
RYLIN STRODE QUICKLY down Berkeley’s main hallway, keeping her gaze forward to avoid accidentally making eye contact with Leda—or worse, Cord. At least it was finally Friday afternoon, the end of her seemingly endless first week here.
She followed the directions on her school tablet, past an enormous sandstone bell tower and a shining statue of the school’s founder, whose head moved majestically to follow her progress as she walked. She turned left at the athletic center toward the art wing, ignoring the somewhat morbid shrine to Eris that had been erected in one corner of the hallway, full of candles and instaphotos of her and notes from students who probably hadn’t even known her that well. It gave Rylin the creeps. Though she wasn’t sure whether that was because she’d seen Eris die, or because of the fact that she was here on scholarship, taking Eris’s spot in their class, which made Rylin’s existence a bizarre sort of living shrine.
When she pushed open the door to Arts Suite 105, a dozen heads whipped toward her—almost entirely girls’. Rylin paused, confused.
“Is this holography?” she asked. The room was black, lined with dark view screens and a velvet charcoal carpet.